The couple behind Kishugu – read this and you’ll know…

MBOMBELA – If you strip Johan and Lizette Heine of life’s luxuries and force them to make do in a desert, they will be fine.

Together, they have seen life’s darkest moments and struggled through dirt-poor days, calling challenges “part of an adventure.” Their life is one big celebration, where the next surprise is always waiting around the corner. If the surprise is pleasant, they embrace it. If it is not, they do the same.

Lowvelders know Johan Heine as the CEO of Kishugu, the implementer of South Africa’s award-winning Working on Fire Programme (WoF). The WoF programme is a highly successful job- creation and skills-development programme.

WoF fights fire from the air and on the ground in non-residential areas. His wife, Lizette, heads up the organisation’s dispatch unit. Hearing them tell the story of how it all started, makes one realise that dreams are often much smaller than what your reality will become.

Their story started in the 1970s. “We were both scuba divers,” said Lizette in WoF’s offices, where Lowvelder met with the two on Friday. “It was not love at first sight. On the contrary, I thought Johan was cocky,” Lizette revealed with a laugh, describing his long-haired, too-cool-for-school look. On top of that, he was employed as an electronic technician in the aviation industry, as he wanted to become a pilot one day.

Johan was into betting as well, to a certain extent. When a group of divers, including Johan and Lizette, went on a diving holiday to Sodwana, he assured a friend he could win her over. The two made a bet and Johan won the prize of a lifetime.

In August 1980, Johan and Lizette were engaged. “On that weekend our aeroplane had a bit of a problem and we had to conduct an emergency landing,” Lizette remembered.
They married in December that year. Their scuba-diving holiday with friends became their honeymoon. “It was action-packed,” remembered Lizette. “Our honeymoon was extended by three days as a cyclone had hit the area and all flights were delayed.”

Meanwhile, Johan was in the process of qualifying as a pilot. His initial air-force training was followed by commercial training. While his air transport was very impressive, their Datsun was testimony to their just-married financial status. Lizette remembered that Johan would work the bakkie’s clutch while she would push it from behind to get it going.

“Times were tough, but we were as happy as we are now,” she said. Johan worked as a pilot for Sasol and for the Department of Environmental Affairs in Bethlehem.
In 1985, Johan was asked to conduct seasonal aerial firefighting at Elandshoogte for Sappi. In 1986, he did so again and Lizette had to jump in and act as dispatcher for the area’s newly formed firefighting union.

“At that time each landowner would merely protect his own land from their borders. We have since changed the approach. Today, we can see the fires from above and make suggestions for containing the veld fires based on what pilots can see in the air,” she explained.

As dispatcher, she ran the control room. “Whenever someone said mkhulu mlilo (big fire) on the radio, I would run to call Johan, who would put the right processes into motion,” she explained. The firefighting union added another dispatch centre in the Highveld and they continued to grow.

In 2003 WoF was born. “The shortage of firefighters outside the municipal demarcations motivated this to a great extent,” explained Lizette.
The Veld and Forest Fire Act was proclaimed and it conferred the responsibility of fighting veld fires upon the state. WoF was contracted to help the government in doing so. At that time, job creation and skills development were identified as means to achieve social upliftment.

The government acknowledged that WoF could uplift previously disadvantaged men and woman by training them as workers in the firefighting industry and by giving them jobs. Since then, hundreds of lives have been changed. For Johan, his career as a pilot has taken on a dimension he would never have expected.

“It was more that I could have dreamed of and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. Lizette, Johan and their team work extremely hard. “When you deal with the one fire season after the other, taking a vacation is something you may neglect until you reach a point where you are overworked beyond belief,” Lizette said. This happened to her a few years ago. “I went to Johan with a yes-or-divorce question, Áre we going on holiday?’ I asked.”

Two days later they were in a travel agent’s office and 10 days later they were on a plane. Both described it as one of their favourite holidays. Memories include the image of their rental car screeching to a halt after having lost a hubcap when they drove through the only pothole they saw in India. Lizette ran after it and knee-deep into a rice field, she salvaged the hubcap.

Johan remembered meeting a little girl dressed in red from head to toe. She was considered a god by Indians. She blessed him, as did a monk in Nepal, according to Lizette.
While in India the tuk-tuk that the two were transported in was swamped in a flash flood. The country was also hit by a bomb attack and an earthquake during that time. According to Johan, the couple’s travelling bucket list is a long one.

“We want to see Egypt, Turkey, Croatia, Madagascar and the Indian islands to mention only a few,” he said. As always, these trips will be full of surprises, as the Heines do not plan their travels.

How do they manage to live, travel and work together so easily? “We do make a great team,” says Lizette. “Johan is the visionary and I am the micro-doer. We are total opposites, but are the same in ways that matter.” According to Johan, they have always kept their work and personal lives separate.

“We’ve been through bad times and good times and we celebrate all phases of life,” said Lizette. “Life is colourful, but one must remember that black is a colour as well. And through everything, we’re each others’ soundboards,” concluded Lizette.

The grace with which they handle problem situations, was displayed again on Friday. It was the day after 300 of WoF’s firefighters decided to strike while on a firefighting mission in Canada.

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Johan was understanding. “We must always see situations from someone else’s perspective,” said both he and Lizette. “There is good in every person and I always remind myself that nobody, including myself, is perfect,” said Johan when asked how he felt about the firefighters’ conduct. At that time, the organisation was still handling the dispute.

The Heine’s have two daughters, Lizane (31) and Ruzane (28), who are adventurers at heart as well. At the age of 13, Lizane was the youngest South African acrobat pilot ever. She spent more than seven years as the captain of a yacht, taking yachts between South Africa and the Caribbean islands.
Ruzane, a commercial pilot, is an artist at heart.

“We all have a bit of an arty streak,” said Lizette. The family loves art so much that they have a double-storey wall in their house that is covered in art. From impromptu travels to seeing the world as their canvas, the Heines are as unique and unapologetically themselves as they come.